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Israel OKs Call - Up of 30, 000 Soldiers

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 27, 2006
Filed at 3:29 p.m. ET

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel's government decided Thursday not to expand its battle with Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon for now, but authorized the army to call up 30,000 reserve soldiers in case the fighting intensified. The Lebanese health minister said up to 600 civilians have been killed in the campaign, including as many as 200 still buried in the rubble of destroyed buildings.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, meanwhile, said she was ''willing and ready'' to return to the region to work for a sustainable peace agreement. But President Bush suggested he would support the offensive for as long as it would take to cripple Hezbollah.

Bush also sharply condemned Iran for its support of Hezbollah.

The events signaled that Israel and the United States were settling in for a much longer battle than had initially been expected, one that could grow far bloodier if Israel decides its air attacks and small-scale invasion into Lebanon is not working and sends in thousands of more ground forces.

With no end in sight to the fighting, al Qaida weighed in Thursday for the first time since the Israeli offensive began, vowing to attack ''everywhere'' until Islam prevails.

In recent days, senior Israeli generals urged the government to authorize a broader ground campaign in southern Lebanon, which they said would help the thousands of troops already engaged in bloody battles there.

Israel's security Cabinet authorized the army to call up three additional reserve divisions to refresh the troops in Lebanon if they were needed, but rejected the generals' advice to expand the offensive.

However, Justice Minister Haim Ramon said that world leaders' failure to call for an immediate cease-fire during a Rome summit gave Israel a green light to carry on with its campaign to crush Hezbollah -- an assertion hotly rejected by European officials.

The conference ended Wednesday in disagreement, with most European leaders calling for an immediate cease-fire and the United States wanting to give Israel more time to neutralize Hezbollah.

''We received yesterday at the Rome conference permission from the world .... to continue the operation, this war, until Hezbollah won't be located in Lebanon and until it is disarmed,'' Ramon told Israel's Army Radio.

European leaders said Ramon's interpretation was badly mistaken.

''I would say just the opposite -- yesterday in Rome it was clear that everyone present wanted to see an end to the fighting as swiftly as possible,'' German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said.

Israeli airstrikes on southern Lebanon on Thursday struck roads and houses, many believed to be the deserted homes of Hezbollah activists, in the apple-growing region of Iqlim al-Tuffah. The strikes caused casualties, but fighting kept ambulances and civil defense crews from the areas, security officials and witnesses said.

Other strikes hit a Lebanese army base in the north, while artillery and warplanes pounded the area near the border, according to witnesses. However, the fierce ground battles that raged Wednesday through the border villages of Bint Jbail and Maroun al-Ras appeared to have abated, with U.N. observers reporting only ''sporadic fighting'' there.

Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz said the strategic damage to Hezbollah was ''enormous'' and vowed that the group would ''not return to what it was.''

Israel launched its offensive in Lebanon on July 12, after Hezbollah guerrillas overran the border, killed three Israeli soldiers on patrol and captured two others.

Since then, at least 429 people in Lebanon -- most of them civilians -- have been killed in a punishing campaign of airstrikes, artillery shelling and clashes, according to Lebanese officials and Hezbollah. A total of 33 Israeli soldiers died in the fighting and 19 civilians were killed in Hezbollah's unyielding rocket attacks on Israel's northern towns, the army said.

The guerrillas shot 110 rockets into Israel on Thursday, lightly wounding 20 people and bringing the total of rockets launched to 1,564.

The army broadcast a warning on its Arabic-language radio station Thursday telling Lebanese in the south that their villages would be ''totally destroyed'' if rockets were fired from them.

Army Chief of Staff Dan Halutz said there have been hundreds of Hezbollah casualties and that ''we have caused serious damage to their rocket launching capabilities.''

But Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, a staunch supporter of Hezbollah, said Israel would never be able to crush the group militarily, and should stop fighting and start talking.


''Whatever it (Israel) does it's not going to reach its goal,'' he told The Associated Press. ''They're not going to be able to take out the weaponry of Hezbollah. So all they're doing is massive destruction.''

Meanwhile, al-Qaida issued its first response to the violence, threatening to retaliate with new attacks.

The videotape by Osama bin Laden deputy Ayman al-Zawahri was an effort by the terror network to rally Islamic militants by exploited Israel's two-pronged offensive -- against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas-linked militants in Gaza.

''We cannot just watch these shells as they burn our brothers in Gaza and Lebanon and stand by idly, humiliated,'' al-Zawahri said, adding that ''all the world is a battlefield open in front of us.''

''The war with Israel does not depend on cease-fires. ... It is a jihad (holy war) for the sake of God and will last until (our) religion prevails ... from Spain to Iraq,'' he said. ''We will attack everywhere.''

In Damascus, Syrian and Iranian officials gathered to hold meetings on the crisis, according to Iranian and Kuwaiti news reports. Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah was also to take part in the meeting as well as Syrian President Bashar Assad, according to Kuwait's Al-Siyassah newspaper, known for its opposition to the Syrian regime.

The newspaper said the meeting was designed to discuss ways to maintain supplies to Hezbollah fighters with ''Iranian arms flowing through Syrian territories.''

Hezbollah spokesman Hussein Rahhal would not comment on whether Nasrallah, whose movements are kept strictly secret, was in Damascus but was dismissive of the Kuwaiti newspaper report.

With cease-fire efforts stalemated, Rice -- who was in Malaysia after a trip to Beirut, Jerusalem and the Rome conference -- said she was prepared to make a second tour of the Middle East, but did not announce a timetable.

''I am more than happy to go back,'' Rice said, if her efforts can ''move toward a sustainable cease-fire that would end the violence.''

In his interview with Army Radio, Ramon said the Israeli air force must bomb villages before ground forces enter, suggesting that this would help prevent future Israeli casualties. Ramon spoke a day after nine soldiers were killed in house-to-house fighting in two border villages. Hezbollah acknowledged Thursday that it lost five fighters in that fighting, though Israel said at least 30 were killed.

Asked whether entire villages should be flattened, he said: ''These places are not villages. They are military bases in which Hezbollah people are hiding and from which they are operating.''

Thousands of civilians are believed trapped in the border villages, according to humanitarian officials.

International Red Cross spokesman Hisham Hassan said their teams that have visited border villages under heavy bombardment, have found families hiding in schools, mosques and churches, or huddled together in homes they hope will withstand the barrage.

''But even the residents we speak to can't say how many are there, because everyone's hiding, they don't know who's dead or alive,'' he said.